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This story was reported by The Globe Spotlight Team, reporters Scott Allen, Marcella Bombardieri, Andrea Estes, and editor Thomas Farragher. It was written by Allen.
By any measure, Deirdre I. Kennedy was an outstanding candidate for chief probation officer at West Roxbury District Court. A Wellesley College graduate with two master's degrees, Kennedy was a streetwise veteran of the Dorchester courthouse who spoke fluent Spanish. She was also a proven leader who had run an antidomestic violence program that won nearly $8 million in federal grants.
But, in the closed world of the Massachusetts Probation Department, dazzling credentials scarcely matter. Probation Commissioner John J. "Jack'' O'Brien chose the 73-year-old father of a state legislator instead, doing a favor for then-House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, one of O'Brien's key political mentors, who said he sought the promotion for James J. Rush as a "capstone'' to the man's 41-year probation career.
The top judge in West Roxbury warned O'Brien that Rush was not up to the task, and his two-year tenure turned out to be a fiasco. Rush clashed with five female employees who alleged that he threw tantrums, tossed papers at them, and slammed the door in one woman's face. He abruptly retired in September 2006, leaving behind a sex and race discrimination lawsuit filed by two of the women, but taking home a boost in his pension thanks to his late-career promotion.
Rush's quick exit gave O'Brien a second chance to take the advice of Judge Kathleen E. Coffey, who recommended Kennedy for the job. Instead, O'Brien chose another politically connected candidate: a veteran probation officer who has donated $2,100 to Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, an O'Brien ally who employs O'Brien's wife and one of his daughters.
After 12 years in charge, Jack O'Brien has transformed the Probation Department from a national pioneer of better ways to rehabilitate criminals into an organization that functions more like a private employment agency for the well connected, the Spotlight Team has found.
O'Brien's agency now employs at least 250 friends, relatives, and financial backers of politicians and top court officials, the Spotlight review found, including children of US Representative William D. Delahunt, former mayor Raymond L. Flynn of Boston, and former Senate president William M. Bulger. The agency has also hired House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo's godson, who, at 28, is now the youngest chief probation officer in Massachusetts.
O'Brien has taken care of friends, too, finding jobs for the children of his Boston College football teammate, for a friend who ran a fur shop, for a former plasterer friendly with Cahill, and promoting two probation officers who moonlight as bartenders at a Northampton pizza joint frequented by one of his top deputies. Along the way, O'Brien's family has also benefited.
O'Brien's agency hired his daughter Genevieve, despite a warning that he might be violating the court system's rules against nepotism. That gave O'Brien's immediate family two jobs at the Probation Department, including his own, and two more under Cahill with a combined annual income of $260,000.
No legislator has reaped greater benefit from the pattern of hiring than state Representative Thomas M. Petrolati, the third-ranking House member who is regarded by many members of the Western Massachusetts legislative delegation as the "king of patronage'' in courthouses west of Worcester. Under O'Brien, the Probation Department has provided jobs for Petrolati's wife, a former staffer, the husband of his legislative aide, and literally dozens of Springfield-area residents who have donated money to Petrolati.
Since 2002, Petrolati has collected twice as much in campaign contributions from probation employees as any other legislator, according to campaign finance records. And O'Brien's former deputy commissioner, William H. Burke III, planned to help Petrolati raise even more last week as master of ceremonies at his annual fund-raiser.
"Tommy can get whatever he wants as long as Tommy delivers on the budget,'' said a Petrolati confidant who said Petrolati gets first crack at finding candidates for probation jobs throughout Western Massachusetts.
Petrolati for weeks declined requests for an interview, and went so far at one point as to evade a reporter who visited him in Ludlow. Last week, in an e-mail response to Globe questions, he denied that he has undue influence over the Probation Department, saying that he recommends only people he believes are qualified.
"All that I expect . . . is that they will do a good job,'' wrote Petrolati. He also pointed out that he doesn't vote on the department's budget because his wife works for the agency.
But it's clear that the Probation Department's friends in the Legislature have delivered: The department's budget grew more than 160 percent from 1998 to 2008, a period in which other public safety agencies' spending increased by 20 percent or less, according to a recent report by the nonprofit Boston Foundation. The largesse has enabled the department to pay 79 managers at least $100,000 annually and to give pay increases in 2010 to 43 of its 100 best-paid employees amid a budget crisis.
O'Brien, who agreed to only one half-hour telephone interview with the Spotlight Team, denies that his budget has soared compared with others. He argues that changes in the court budget process in 2004 make comparisons to earlier years impossible. Since 2004, however, O'Brien's budget has grown more than twice as fast as other court offices'.
He also says managers' pay has been frozen since 2004. But he did not note that the freeze doesn't apply to increases based on seniority or promotions. In fact, most managers' pay has increased since 2004, including O'Brien's own salary, which rose from $116,241 to $130,305.
While O'Brien's reign has been rewarding for top legislators and his inner circle, the pervasive intrusion of politics and favoritism has, according to interviews with a broad array of Probation Department personnel, badly damaged the morale of an agency with a big job to do: supervising tens of thousands of those convicted of drunken driving, sex offenses, and other crimes who are serving their sentences in the community. A six-month investigation by the Spotlight Team also found that:
The department is beset by a "pay to play'' mentality in which ambitious employees, whether qualified or not, make campaign contributions to key politicians in hopes of advancing their careers. "You've got to have political juice,'' complained one probation officer who was passed over for promotion in favor of a less experienced but politically connected candidate.
Since the Legislature, at Finneran's urging, transferred power over hiring from judges to O'Brien in 2001, Probation Department employees' donations to legislative campaigns have more than doubled, a Spotlight Team analysis shows, rising from $23,413 in 2002 to more than $55,000 in 2008. Most of the money goes to just 10 powerful legislators, including DeLeo, Petrolati, and two others who have immediate family members working for the department.
■ Promising candidates who don't have political connections are routinely passed over to make way for the politically wired. O'Brien, for example, didn't promote veteran probation officer Karen Jackson to assistant chief probation officer in 2005, even though she was the unanimous first choice of a hiring committee at Milford District Court that included the local judge and Jackson's boss, a chief probation officer. Instead, O'Brien hired the grandniece of then-State Representative Marie J. Parente.
Jackson said that when she called Parente, the lawmaker said she felt guilty to have lobbied for her relative, who initially was ranked in the middle of the pack of candidates. "The fix was in,'' said Jackson. "If you don't know anyone, you're not going anywhere.''
Parente said she has repeatedly helped Jackson throughout her career in the department. The former lawmaker said she does not recall whether she lobbied for her relative's promotion. "I was always careful about the conflict-of-interest law,'' Parente said. "I truly can't remember what I did for her.''
■ Lax oversight of the collection of fines and court costs paid by probationers has left the department, which handles more than $70 million a year in cash, vulnerable to theft. The Spotlight Team has learned that the state's trial court, after an embezzlement scandal in the Lawrence probation office, has identified five other probation offices that have multiple deficiencies in the way they handle and account for funds. A cashier at a sixth office, in Stoughton, resigned in August after allegedly stealing thousands in court-ordered payments from offenders.
The alleged theft of $2 million from the probation office in Lawrence District Court went on for three years despite two formal warnings from outside auditors that the clerk, Marie Morey, had almost no supervision, appeared to use irregular bookkeeping methods and couldn't explain some missing funds. Ultimately, the Administrative Office of the Trial Court — not the Probation Department — discovered the scope of the alleged crime. Morey has pleaded not guilty.
Yet the regional supervisor who oversaw the Lawrence District Court probation office, Jeffrey L. Akers, is still on the job and says he has little knowledge of the scandal. O'Brien said in a statement that he had no plans to discipline Akers because it's up to court administrators to oversee "the financial integrity of the court.''
Akers's written job description, however, calls for him to provide "technical assistance'' to Lawrence and other probation offices in "fiscal matters and personnel issues.'' Moreover, State Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci's scathing 2007 report finding discrepancies in Morey's bookkeeping was addressed to probation officials, who formally promised to fix the problems.
Chief Justice Robert A. Mulligan, chief administrator of Massachusetts' trial courts, said he is frustrated by the apparent lack of accountability by probation. "There was absolutely no oversight,'' he said.
■ In three cases, politically connected employees with histories of alleged misconduct or sloppy work avoided serious career fallout. For example, Worcester police fruitlessly complained to O'Brien in 2008 that associate probation officer Ashley Losapio, the stepdaughter of a judge, had compromised an investigation by leaking information to criminals.
Alfred E. Barbalunga was promoted despite an investigation recommending he be sanctioned for poor job performance.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
Alfred E. Barbalunga was promoted despite an investigation recommending he be sanctioned for poor job performance.
Police say Losapio admitted hanging around with "bad guys,'' and had the telephone numbers of drug and gun suspects programmed into her cellphone. While she told police she never gave the suspects information about criminal matters, she acknowledged that she would tell them whom she saw in court.
The Worcester district attorney's office said it found no probable cause to prosecute Losapio, but then-Detective Captain Edward J. McGinn Jr. wrote to O'Brien that "she is not a suitable person to serve this community as a probation officer.'' McGinn said he's never heard back from O'Brien. Since then, Losapio has been transferred. She continues to work for probation, and her pay has increased by nearly $3,000 a year.
McGinn, now Worcester's deputy police chief, said his investigators believe Losapio continues to associate with known criminals.
"How on Monday through Friday from 8 to 4 can you sit down and try to guide a probationer, try to straighten their lives out . . . and then go run with them at night?'' McGinn said in a recent interview.
Losapio did not respond to multiple messages left at her home and office. O'Brien's office said the matter was "fully investigated, resulting in the appropriate action.''
More generally, O'Brien categorically denies that politics play a role in hiring at his 2,000-plus employee agency. He asserted that everyone is hired in an open and fair manner, contending that all candidates for posted jobs go through a three-step screening process. Finalists are selected at the local level, and the top candidate is chosen by O'Brien's office in Boston, he said, adding that his choice then must be approved by Chief Justice Mulligan, technically his boss.
But the Legislature clearly intended to give Mulligan very limited power, declaring repeatedly in the Probation Department's budget that the commissioner has "exclusive authority to appoint, dismiss, assign and discipline probation officers.'' Mulligan can veto O'Brien's decisions only for limited reasons, such as failure to follow affirmative action guidelines.
Nonetheless, O'Brien contends the hiring process is collaborative. "I know of no other position in the trial court that has a more extensive interview process,'' he said.
Reports of irregularities in the process are legion, however: the children of influential people who got jobs even though they didn't make the list of finalists, friends and allies hired on an "acting'' basis without a formal hiring process, job applicants with no political ties who find their interview evaluations inexplicably changed to reduce their overall ranking.
Moreover, the Spotlight Team has found a disturbing pattern in which probation officers suddenly start donating to key legislators just before or after they get a job in the department, giving the appearance that political contributions pave the path to success.
For example, Arthur Sousa of Somerville began donating to House Speaker DeLeo in April 2006 even though he didn't live in DeLeo's district. Since that year, he has given DeLeo $1,700, and his career has taken off: Sousa was promoted from associate to full probation officer, and his pay jumped almost $15,000 a year to $50,348. In a brief interview, Sousa claimed to be a longtime DeLeo supporter, but campaign finance records show that he had not made donations to DeLeo or other state candidates in the four years before he began giving to the speaker.
Probation employees, like all citizens, can legally give $500 a year to any politician for any reason. State law, however, forbids bosses from pressuring state employees to donate to campaigns. Harder to assess is a department like probation where there is little plain evidence of such direct pressure, but where political contributions seem closely linked, in many cases, to career advancement.
For his part, DeLeo defends the Probation Department. In an e-mailed statement, he said, "While every organization has its own flaws and weaknesses, I hear that the Probation Department is a functional organization that does a difficult job under tough conditions.''
But others say politics and favoritism are eating away at the agency's morale.
"Every single promotion is done by politics,'' lamented Jack Alicandro, the recently retired president of Local 229 of the National Association of Government Employees, the union that represents probation officers. "The rule of thumb to either get hired or promoted is you had to have attended BC [O'Brien's alma mater], worked at Suffolk County [where O'Brien once worked], or get three calls from politicians.''
Chief Justice Mulligan has sometimes challenged O'Brien's hiring practices, but with limited success. Mulligan warned O'Brien in 2005 that he was violating the court's rule against employing family members by hiring his daughter as a secretary in the department's Office of Community Corrections. But O'Brien sidestepped Mulligan by hiring Genevieve on an "acting'' basis, for which hiring standards are less strict. In 2009, she made $44,123.
O'Brien at first wouldn't speak to his daughter's hiring, and his spokesman called the inquiry an "ambush question.'' Last week, however, he said in a statement that he did not directly hire his daughter because she works in a separate division of probation from his office. He said her hiring is supported by "two ethics decisions,'' which he did not detail.
Mulligan also tried to stop O'Brien from hiring a second child of his former Boston Col lege football teammate, Stephen Anzalone, himself a probation officer. In 2007, Mulligan discovered that six members of the Anzalone clan worked for either the Probation Department or courtroom security, though Stephen P. Anzalone Jr. had disclosed only three on his job application. Mulligan argued that he had the power to block the hire because the younger Anzalone falsified his job application.
But the younger Anzalone has waged a fight all the way to the Supreme Judicial Court to get his job, saying that Mulligan waited too long before he vetoed the offer and that he didn't deliberately withhold information about three cousins who work for the court.
While Mulligan battles O'Brien, the Legislature has remained steadfastly supportive of the commissioner's priorities, continuing to pump in money even as the state plunged into a budget crisis in 2009. With virtually no floor debate, the House and Senate in November restored $4.4 million in probation spending that Governor Deval Patrick had vetoed.
On the House floor, Petrolati and other O'Brien supporters celebrated their "win'' for the Probation Department by giving one another high fives and patting each other on the back, according to one veteran legislator.
"The vote was insensitive to those forced to bear cuts not only in other court services and programs but also in public safety, local aid, and human services,'' said state Representative John H. Rogers. "It's an insult to every needy person out there.''
The rules changed when O'Brien got in the game
Boston bootmaker John Augustus invented the concept of probation back in 1841 when he approached the police about taking custody of a "common drunkard'' who he thought could be rehabilitated without sitting in a jail cell. Augustus sobered the man up, found him a job, and launched a new approach to corrections that has kept millions out of prison.
For generations, Massachusetts probation officials have taken pride in the legacy of Augustus, and, as late as the 1990s, the state continued to be a leader in guiding criminals into the mainstream. Under Commissioner Donald Cochran in the 1990s, Massachusetts probation officers developed a cutting-edge questionnaire to estimate the public danger posed by probationers. A chief aide, Ronald P. Corbett Jr., served as editor of a national journal on probation.
But in 1997, Chief Judge John J. Irwin Jr. shocked probation observers by selecting O'Brien to succeed Cochran instead of Corbett, who had just been voted national probation executive of the year by his peers. Irwin, now deceased, indicated to his staff that he wanted a more street-wise commissioner, someone who was more focused on "getting probation officers into the community'' than producing research papers. Who better than Jack O'Brien, then running a new program that set up community-based offices where probationers could go for services ranging from drug-testing to basic education?
As O'Brien, who had also served 15 years in the trenches as a probation officer, said in a rare interview with his hometown newspaper back in 1998, "You have to be out there to be effective.''
But O'Brien also had the political pedigree for Beacon Hill success: He played football in the late 1970s for Boston College, Irwin's alma mater, and grew up in Dorchester, not far from former speaker Finneran. Irwin liked the former BC athlete enough to make him the court's legislative liaison years before he named O'Brien commissioner. At the State House, O'Brien played up his ties to the powerful Finneran. An inside player was born.
As commissioner, O'Brien began filling top jobs with former colleagues from Suffolk Superior Court, while hiring friends and family of the influential for entry-level jobs. The rules changed in other ways, too.
Alfred E. Barbalunga was promoted despite an investigation recommending he be sanctioned for poor job performance.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
Alfred E. Barbalunga was promoted despite an investigation recommending he be sanctioned for poor job performance.
That was underscored by the case of Alfred E. "Alf'' Barbalunga, the son of a Pittsfield judge said to be friendly with O'Brien. In 1999, Barbalunga came under fire for poor job performance as a probation officer in the district court in North Adams, according to several sources with direct knowledge of the situation. Among the complaints against the younger Barbalunga was that he wasn't always showing up for work, the sources said.
One judge recommended Barbalunga be fired, but the judge overseeing an investigation recommended a severe sanction short of dismissal, according to the sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the personnel proceedings were confidential.
In the end, Barbalunga received no discipline at all. And when a slot opened in 2002 for chief probation officer at the district court in Great Barrington, O'Brien gave him the promotion. Today, he makes $102,946 a year, more than twice the income he earned when he was investigated.
In an interview, Barbalunga denied that his work ethic was the central focus of the investigation. He gave the Globe a list of court references, including a former judge who said he is a solid worker.
"That was a very unfortunate time,'' Barbalunga said. "I think I've done an outstanding job.''
After O'Brien's appointment in 1997, legislative leaders appreciated the commissioner's attentiveness to their hiring suggestions. But they remained frustrated that probation officers assigned to the courts had to be approved by local judges. Finneran, in an interview, said the process needed to be streamlined, and he pushed through a bill in late 2001 centralizing hiring and promotion decisions in O'Brien's office. Finneran knew that might increase the number of political hires. That's not always bad, he said.
"You don't want to bring someone in who is inept or has a bad attitude,'' the former speaker explained. "If you scan a list of probation officers, there might be sons and daughters of politicians and judges there. That's not going to go away. And, honestly, I don't think it should. They shouldn't be excluded because of the achievements of their parents.''
O'Brien's new power to hire and fire made it easier for politicians to advocate in favor of particular candidates, and some legislators began keeping lists of candidates they wanted to place. Petrolati, the House speaker pro tempore, became increasingly involved in hiring decisions in 15 courthouses in Western Massachusetts.
At sleepy Belchertown District Court, for example, David E. Roy, a respected lawyer with 24 years of experience, lost his job as acting chief probation officer in 2005 in favor of the husband of Petrolati's legislative aide, Colleen Ryan. Robert Ryan had just retired from a long career in the federal probation service, but wanted to work for the state. When Roy declined to apply for the job as Ryan's assistant, probation hired Petrolati's former aide and sometime driver, Andre Pereira.
"I don't want to talk about that part of my life,'' said Roy, who was demoted to probation officer in 2005 with a $20,000 pay cut.
Ambitious probation officers and job candidates quickly figured out that campaign donations to politicians with O'Brien's ear could jump-start a career like nothing else, and events such as Petrolati's fund-raiser at Ludlow Country Club last Thursday became important dates. Since 2002, at least 100 probation employees have given money to Petrolati even though he hasn't faced an opponent since 2000.
"You gotta kiss the ring,'' explained the Petrolati confidant with direct knowledge of how the patronage process has worked and who asked not to be named.
Former deputy commissioner Burke, who said he interviewed 3,000 potential probation employees before retiring in 2008, angrily denied that Petrolati or other politicians influenced his recommendations. "I'm telling you, if they were dummies, they didn't make it,'' said Burke, who bought four $100 tickets to Petrolati's fund-raiser last week because "I like the guy.''
Some probation officers resent Petrolati's influence, but paying homage seems to work.
Michael J. LeCours, an official with probation's community service program, began donating heavily to Petrolati and state Senator Stephen J. Buoniconti of West Springfield after he got in trouble in 2003 for writing a letter of recommendation for a convicted racketeer on court stationery. LeCours called Carmine Manzi, convicted for activities related to the New York Genovese crime family, "a great asset to both [his] barbershop and his community.'' He got a public rebuke from Chief Justice Mulligan's office for not using common sense.
Since the incident, LeCours has become a supervisor and increased his annual pay by almost $20,000 a year to $73,647 in 2009. During the same period, he has given $1,775 to Petrolati and $1,800 to Buoniconti, compared with just $75 for both in the two years before.
LeCours calls both men friends, but denies they helped advance his career.
LeCours is more forthcoming than many colleagues with similar giving patterns: The Spotlight Team attempted to contact about 30 of the 155 probation employees who've given at least $300 to one state legislator in recent years, but most either declined to comment, hung up, or did not return phone calls.
Some, however, said legislators none too subtly pressure probation employees to contribute, especially after they deliver a job or promotion.
"It's made very clear: You're on the team. We'll be calling on you for support,'' said the confidant of Petrolati, referring to Petrolati's expectations of probation employees he has helped. "They're put on the mailing list and they're expected to donate.''
Petrolati rejected the confidant's characterization, writing, "To contend that I expect 'pay' for supporting a particular individual's job application is wholly irresponsible.''
Similarly, some probation employees may feel pressure to support politicians backed by O'Brien. In July 2005, an impressive 45 probation employees — mostly senior managers — donated $5,900 to state treasurer Cahill. O'Brien said he played no role in orchestrating the donations to help out his fellow Quincy resident and the man who hired his wife to work in the state Lottery a few months later.
Cahill said in a statement that he had known Laurie O'Brien for years and that she was hired based on qualifications.
For years, O'Brien relied on his powerful connections and a determinedly low public profile to build his empire with minimal notice, nearly tripling his department budget (after allowing for inflation) during a decade when the number of criminals who require hands-on supervision fell by more than 10 percent.
Recently, a series of unflattering reports have focused an uncomfortable light on O'Brien, portraying his agency as a "dysfunctional'' rogue in state government. So far, the Legislature has shown little interest in reform proposals — the joint Judiciary Committee didn't even ask questions when Public Safety Secretary Mary Beth Heffernan presented the administration's plan to bring probation under the governor's control.
The bitter 2008 fight to succeed disgraced House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi left behind suspicions among Rogers supporters that O'Brien had played a hand in helping DeLeo defeat the Norwood Democrat. Two Rogers supporters, insisting on anonymity, point to what they view as a suspicious pattern of hiring — an accusation that DeLeo and his allies reject and resent.
In the spring of that year, the House Ways and Means Committee, then chaired by DeLeo, recommended $137 million for probation, $2.3 million more than Chief Justice Mulligan requested. In the course of the budget debate, probation's friends in the House increased funding by another $3.7 million.
The legislative windfall gave O'Brien more money for a flurry of hiring. By May 2008, O'Brien had hired people associated with legislators Rogers believed were supporting him, including Democratic state Representatives James J. O'Day of West Boylston, Geraldo Alicea of Charlton, and Harold P. Naughton Jr. of Clinton.
All three legislators say they always supported DeLeo for speaker and did not change their support based on O'Brien's hiring of O'Day's colleague, Alicea's intern, and the daughter of the police chief in Naughton's hometown.
"I was with Bob DeLeo from the beginning,'' said Alicea, a former probation officer who said O'Brien has done a good job. "Jack O'Brien never reached out . . . in asking for support for Bob DeLeo.''
DeLeo flatly denies that he offered probation jobs in exchange for votes. O'Brien said he played no role in the speakership fight.
But supporters of Rogers said they believe that the burst of probation hiring helped doom Rogers by peeling off the votes of legislators such as Alicea.
High stakes, consequences in the house O'Brien built
State Representative Michael F. Rush, the West Roxbury Democrat whose father served as chief probation officer of the district court there, was said to be furious when a draft report by the trial court's affirmative action officer found merit to the allegations that his father discriminated against five women. The elder Rush announced his plan to retire three days before the report was completed.
The younger Rush is now sponsoring a budget amendment, backed by DeLeo, to move the trial court's downtown administrative offices to public safety Siberia — the dingy top floor of Charlestown District Court — to save money. A source with direct knowledge of the matter said Rush has spoken of wanting to punish Mulligan, the chief administrative judge, for how his father was treated. Mulligan said James Rush was not pressured to retire.
DeLeo's office insisted the proposal is only about cost savings, but it underscores the stakes for probation employees and judges in going up against the house that Jack O'Brien built. Time and again, employees wanted to talk about the gross inequities in today's Probation Department, but they shrank from speaking out publicly for fear of retaliation from O'Brien and his allies.
For good reason, it appears.
Two of the women who complained about Rush, both African-American, went on to sue him and O'Brien, citing sex and race discrimination. Their case is pending. That lawsuit, say Helen Brown and Crystal Young, set off a chain of retaliatory actions by fellow probation officers, particularly Rush's replacement, Mark J. Prisco, who has given more money to political campaigns since 2002 — $10,000 — than any other probation employee.
Brown says Prisco took away her main duties as assistant chief, supervising more junior probation officers, and assigned her instead to oversee the front counter of the probation office. According to court papers, Prisco denied that he demoted her, but said Brown was performing her job increasingly poorly. Thirteen members of the Probation Department signed a petition complaining that Brown had a negative attitude and was creating a hostile environment.
The presiding judge, Coffey, felt that "the omnipresence of Representative Rush,'' and his anger over the accusations against his father, had poisoned the probation office against Brown, she said in her deposition.
The elder Rush is said to be seriously ill and not available for comment; in court documents he denied all the allegations. Michael Rush did not return numerous messages, but in his deposition he denied wielding influence in probation and said Coffey "tortured my father.''
Coffey, in her deposition, noted that Rush sits on the Ways and Means Committee, which holds sway over probation's budget and therefore its ability to save jobs from budget cuts.
"It's my understanding that a lot of employees believe that loyalty and allegiance to the Legislature, and in particular to Mr. Rush, ensures job safety and protection,'' she said.
Matt Carroll of the Globe staff contributed to this report.


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MOSCOW (AFP) – Russians in the Far East on Tuesday battled rising floodwaters as authorities evacuated more than 23,000 people and scrambled to prevent the outbreak of disease.
Heavy rains pounding Khabarovsk, a Far Eastern city located near the Chinese border, since July have swelled the local Amur River to nearly seven metres -- a level unseen since monitoring of the area began in 1895.
The floodwaters damaged property, infrastructure and crops, displaced tens of thousands and raised fresh questions about the Russian government's readiness to handle natural disasters.
There have been no reports of fatalities but more than 23,000 people have been evacuated so far, the office of the Kremlin's Far Eastern envoy Viktor Ishayev said in a statement.
Television footage showed locals making their way through a flooded area by boat and a cow wading through muddy waters, submerged nearly up to its neck.
Locals complained that faeces were finding their way into the water. "The saddest part is that we are being flooded in shit," a local man said in televised remarks.
The floods have affected the Yakutia, Primorsky Krai and Amur and Khabarovsk regions as well as the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.
On Tuesday, the Amur river, which serves as a natural border with China where it is known as the Heilongiang river, has risen to 676 centimetres.
It is expected to rise by another 30-40 centimetres over the next two days.
"According to estimates, the water levels near Khabarovsk can reach 730-780 centimetres on August 24-28," the Khabarovsk city administration said.
Yury Varakin, head of the situation centre at Russia's state weather service Rosgidromet, said the water levels around Khabarovsk reached a level unseen since regular monitoring began in 1895.
"The highest water level stood at 642 centimetres in 1897," he told AFP.
"In many areas the river spread out over tens of kilometres. The unfavourable situation will remain until the end of the month."
Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin discussed ramping up relief efforts along the border with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yang.
Wang and Rogozin agreed at talks in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin to strengthen joint efforts to deal with flooding along the Chinese-Russian border, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The Russian military have been deployed to help erect flood defence bunds along the Amur river, with authorities saying they have prepared 10,000 sandbags to use in case the waters breached the defences.
Kremlin envoy Ishayev asked the General Prosecutor's office to look into how the authorities have been handling the emergency.
"Residents in a number of areas say: 'If you started a bit earlier then you'd have saved residential settlements.' And they are right," Ishayev said in televised remarks.
He indicated that some areas did not have proper infrastructure to help protect them against the floods.
Authorities said many in the affected areas had been left without access to money after Russia's biggest bank Sberbank shut its branches and ATMs.
Of the more than 29,000 people who needed to be vaccinated, only 2,000 received shots even though the local authorities had enough vaccines against hepatitis A, diphtheria and typhoid fever, Ishayev's office said.
The defence ministry sent an airlift carrying 20 tonnes of vaccines and medicine to the Far East, adding that it had vaccinated 2,000 servicemen involved in relief efforts.
On Tuesday the Magadan region also declared an emergency due to rising water levels.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said thousands of children will be unable to start school on time as some schools have been destroyed and others turned to shelters.
"What will the children be doing if they do not go to school?" he asked a government meeting.
The disaster comes a year after some 170 people perished in devastating floods that hit the town of Krymsk and its outlying areas in the southern Krasnodar region, with many people dying in their sleep.
Four officials including Krymsk's former mayor are now standing trial on charges of criminal negligence.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Team:Utah State/Team
From 2008.igem.org
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iGEM 2008 at USU
Utah State University is proud to be involved in the 2008 iGEM competition for its first year. The 2008 USU iGEM team consists of 4 graduate, 5 undergraduate, and 2 high school students under the supervision of faculty with backgrounds in Biological Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Biology, and Microbiology. Though many project topics were seriously discussed, the team chose to study a method of monitoring polyhydroxybutyrate production in microorganisms by inserting a reporter in the PHB operon. This project was selected because of its potential to make the PHB production process more efficient and cost effective by creating a simple system for determining the optimum time for PHB extraction.
Team Members
Team Member Contributions
- Junling Huo is a PhD student in Biological Engineering who served as an advisor for the iGEM team. He helped to answer student questions, and guide such experimental activities as primer design, electrophoresis, and DNA purification. His personal research is on Rhodobacter sphaeroides, a photosynthetic bacterium.
- Stephen Merrigan is currently working on a MS in Biological Engineering at Utah State studying biodiesel production from algae, and has a background in Microbiology. Stephen's primary role was as an advisor for the project. During the first few months of the project Stephen did background research on project topics. He also helped with lab work when necessary, including DNA purification. Stephen also advised on the wiki construction.
- Joseph Camire advised on targeting the amplification of the full phaCAB cassette and phaC gene,optimizing the PCR process and testing of primer sets with and without prefix and suffix regions. His work also involved sequence determination and analysis of the phaCAB cassette contained in the source plasmid. He also guided work on the phaC gene, which included targeting at amplification and preparing the gene for site-directed mutagenesis for removal of a critical restriction enzyme site prior to ligation of a new phaCAB cassette for biobrick construction.
- Kirsten Sims is a first-year graduate student at Utah State University in Biological and Irrigation Engineering. She received her Bacherlor's degree from Gonzaga University in Biology. Her research focuses on the development of cellulose-derived biofuel. As a member of the USU iGEM team, she was involved in the development and design of the project, as well as participation in the laboratory procedures. She also contributed to the development of the wiki by providing an abstract of the project.
- Trent Mortensen is a finishing senior in Biological Engineering. His main research direction is biomedical in nature, using herbal antibiotics as possible alternatives for disease treatment. As part of the USU iGEM team, he played an active role in the planning of the project, group coordination, advising professor consultation, laboratory work, ordering of materials, lab maintenance, Wiki preparation, documentation, and presentation preparations throughout the course of the project.
- Elisabeth Linton is a Biological Engineering student. Her research is focused on polyhydroxyalkanoates. For the iGEM team, Libbie helped in project determination and planning, as well as literature review and topic research. She also carried out work in the laboratory like restriction enzyme digestions, gel electrophoresis, DNA isolation, and bacterial transformations. She was also responsible for coordinating efforts and organizing the wiki.
- Daniel Nelson is pursuing a degree in Biological Engineering and his current personal research project is "Omega-3 Fatty Acid Production and Extraction in Schizochytrium limacinum SR21." He has enjoyed participating in group discussions as project ideas and direction have been determined. In the lab, he has worked with the team to isolate, purify, and analyze the key DNA promoters for the PHB synthesis gene. He hopes that through study of these promoter regions, the team will find a way to increase PHB production and create a general gene expression system to monitor cellular product accumulation. Outside of the lab, he has helped to design the logo for the USU team.
- Rachel Porter is a sophomore at Utah State University majoring in Biological Engineering/pre-med. For the iGEM project, she helped to carry out some of the lab work. In the lab, she helped isolate and purify DNA, prepare and run electrophoresis gels, and culture cells.
- Matthew Sims is a Senior attending Logan High School. This is his first year participating in laboratory research at Utah State University. He plans to go to college next fall and continue his studies in molecular biology and biochemistry. He helped during the summer months to carry out many experiments and obtain and analyze data.
- Garrett Hinton is a junior at Sky View High School in Smithfield, Utah. He was heavily involved in the project discussion meetings, as well as the background literature research. Garrett spent many hours working on this project and carried out a substantial portion of the laboratory work.
We would like to thank our faculty advisers - Dr. Ron Sims, Dean Scott Hinton, and Dr. Charlie Miller - for all of their support and for providing this opportunity for the students.
Logan and USU
Utah State University is located in Logan, Utah. Logan is about 85 miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah. The city of Logan is located in the heart of Cache Valley near the on the western slopes of the Bear River Mountains, the northernmost branch of the Wasatch Range. The city has a population of approximately 47,000. Logan was established in 1859 and has a rich heritage and wonderful culture. The city of Logan has been stated to be among the safest cities in America.
Utah State University was established in 1888 as the Agricultural College of Utah. It's name was later changed to Utah State Agricultural College and was again changed to Utah State University (USU) in 1957. As the land-grant university in Utah, USU conducts world-class research in a variety of agricultural and natural resource disciplines, and has several projects in conjunction with the Department of Defense, NASA. Utah State University also conducts extensive aerospace research. The main campus is located in Logan, Utah. Beyond the Logan campus, Utah State's Extension programs extend academic resources and support throughout the entire state of Utah, having extension locations in each of Utah's 29 counties.
The Sant Building, shown below, is home to the new USU synthetic biology laboratory


text:
I've got a Debian 7 linux machine and a TP-link MR3020 router attached to it via ethernet cable at eth0
interface, working in WISP mode meant to make it a client rather than an access point:
I also have a separate router connected to ISP and nicely providing wi-fi. My linux machine lacks built-in wi-fi adapter and I want to use WISP mode router instead of external USB wi-fi adapter cause those are very unstable (tried 3 of them, 2 don't work, 1 glitches).
My trouble is that seemingly, my Linux machine can't associate IP address of WISP router with its MAC address:
I used to utilize network manager for eth0, my settings were
gateway ip 192.168.1.1
mask /24
static ip 192.168.1.2 (for my Debian machine itself)
but now I entered them right in /etc/network/interfaces
(see below)
When I ping 192.168.1.1
, it says From 192.168.1.2 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
I found out that arp
doesn't know MAC address for this ip: 192.168.1.1 corresponds to HWaddress [incomplete]
Do you have any advice of how to troubleshoot this? Should I manually assign IP to MAC?
My /etc/network/interfaces
now contains the eth0 interface as primary:
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
$ sudo ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 40:e5:49:32:a2:50
inet addr:192.168.1.2 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::52e5:49ff:fe32:a240/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:68643 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:53708 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:81335250 (77.5 MiB) TX bytes:5438226 (5.1 MiB)
Interrupt:40 Base address:0xe000
$ sudo route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 eth0
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
Capture of packets by wireshark
upon ping 192.168.1.1
contains only spam of tons of ARP packages, all of the same structure:
Source Giga-Byt_something
Destination Broadcast
Protocol Arp
Length 42
Info Who has 192.168.1.1 Tell 192.168.1.2
Arp frame details:
Address Resolution Protocol (request)
Hardware type: Ethernet (1)
Protocol type: IP (0x0800)
Hardware size: 6
Protocol size: 4
Opcode: request (1)
Sender MAC address: Giga-Byt_something (40:e5:49:32:a2:50)
Sender IP address: 192.168.1.2
Target MAC address: 00:00:00_00:00:00 (00:00:00:00:00:00)
Targe IP address: 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)
At the same time router's LAN LED is blinking, indicating that transfer of data is happening.
Router quick manual, contains illustrations on WISP mode: http://www.tp-link.com/resources/document/TL-MR3020_V1_QIG_7106503718.pdf
The problem with arp was solved by setting gateway to 192.168.0.254. Current state is that my Linux machine sees the WISP tp-link router, but WISP router doesn't see the main d-link router in access point mode:
I'm not really sure, if it is possible to have a LAN within LAN. Tomorrow I'll try to associate the router in WISP mode with Windows machine and wireshark
the negotiations between tp-link and d-link routers to find out, how tp-link WISP mode router tries to associate itself with 192.168.1.* LAN.
$ sudo route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.254 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 eth0
192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0


text:
CLR – best Ingredients for first-rate cosmetics
CLR – Chemisches Laboratorium Dr. Kurt Richter GmbH – develops innovative and high-quality cosmetic actives for skin and hair care. In the early 1950s CLR began to focus on the manufacture of biologically active cosmetic ingredients.
Over the past 60 years, CLR has enriched beauty and personal care with many novel actives and pioneering concepts. Specializing in the development of biologically active products, we use state-of-the art methods and technology to ensure high-quality performance and create a stable foundation for future improvements.
We constantly review our quality management system to match current requirements. Consequently we have introduced an integrated management system that combines both quality and environmental aspects in accordance with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards. It is our mission to supply the cosmetics industry with high-quality actives; we have a focus on the development of new products with scientifically proven effects and innovative concepts for their use.
In cooperation with our customers we actively and efficiently work out creative, tailor-made cosmetic concepts that match their specific requirements.


text:
On December 14, 1819, Alabama was admitted to the Union as the twenty-second state. The admission itself was not especially remarkable. Various parts of present-day Alabama had been settled by the French (and later the British) since the early 1700s, and explored by the Spanish as early as the 1540s. The territory to the west, moreover, had already been admitted as the states of Mississippi (1817) and Louisiana (1814). Not least important, Alabama's soil and climate were amenable to cotton production, which was accelerating due to technological innovation and increased demand, such that the years preceding Alabama's statehood had seen substantial growth in the region's population.
What made Alabama's admission significant, politically and constitutionally, was the situation it then posed for Congress regarding the admission of subsequent states, particularly west of the Mississippi River. Specifically, the nation was now evenly divided between free and slave states, having eleven of each. Given a federal Senate based on equal voting for every state regardless of population, this resulting parity of free and slave states made the admission of any additional state an opportunity either to expand or to restrict slavery. The South especially perceived the need to maintain parity as its influence in the House of Representatives declined relative to the North, which was experiencing (and would continue to experience) more immigration as well as greater industrial and economic growth.
This dynamic, in turn, set the stage for a new era of anti- and pro-slavery compromises and eventually—as these compromises less and less alleviated sectional tensions—a rather bloody civil war. To be sure, pending before Congress around the time of Alabama's statehood was the possible admission of two other states, Maine and Missouri. Maine, which at that time was a district of Massachusetts, would presumably be admitted as a free state. Less certain, though, was slavery's precise status in the state to be carved from the Missouri Territory, north of the Arkansaw (later Arkansas) Territory and part of the original Louisiana Territory. There were already slaves in the Missouri Territory, though not a great number of them, and it was proposed in the House of Representatives that slavery in the new state should not be expanded, whether by importation or by birth.
What emerged in early March of 1820, less than three months after Alabama's admission, was the so-called Missouri Compromise: Maine would be admitted as a free state (and was on March 15, 1820), Missouri would be admitted as a slave state (and was on August 10, 1821), and slavery would otherwise be prohibited north of the 36°30′ parallel, Missouri's southern border.
Compromises over slavery were, of course, nothing new to the United States. The three-fifths formula for enumeration, the protection of slave importation until 1808, and the Fugitive Slave Clause were all written into the Constitution, the nation's foundational charter. But the Missouri Compromise did something different: it recognized in express statutory terms the sectional character of the South's "peculiar institution."
Until then, the division between free and slave states east of the Mississippi River had largely rested upon topography (the Ohio River) and upon Mason and Dixon's Line, the result of a survey conducted in the 1760s. In combination with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Missouri Compromise had now codified this sectionalism, legally demarcating two realms within the United States—one composed of exclusively northern free states, the other of basically southern slave states—and thus more forcefully established, in Lincoln's later words, a "house divided against itself."
As Thomas Jefferson lamented in April of 1820, upon learning of the Compromise, "a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper." Jefferson, having a statesman's cognizance, was basically correct in his estimation. Not only was the 1820 Missouri Compromise not the last of the county's compromises over slavery, it essentially became a template for the subsequent treatment of the slavery question and for the future admission of states—and there were indeed to be more states—with each compromise increasingly incurring "the angry passions of men" and entrenching "deeper and deeper" the nation's North-South sectionalism.
In the decades that followed the Missouri Compromise, America's population continued to rise, especially in the North; its territory continued to expand, particularly with the annexation of Texas in 1845, the delineation of the Oregon Territory in 1848, and the acquisition, also in 1848, of the remaining southwest by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; and these factors ensured the continued westward expansion of its people, accelerated by events such as the discovery of gold in California in 1848.
The political and statutory outcome of these developments was the so-called Compromise of 1850, which entailed the admission of California as a free state, the partial undoing of the Missouri Compromise (by leaving the slavery issue to majority decision or "popular sovereignty" in the newly formed New Mexico and Utah Territories, even above parallel 36°30′ north), and the passage of a powerful new fugitive slave law that required, under threat of criminal penalty, the arrest and return of runaway slaves. (The Missouri Compromise's geographical slavery prohibition was conclusively undone by the Kansas- Nebraska Act of 1854, which also left the question of slavery to local popular decision, and was then deemed void by the Supreme Court's 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford.)
Eventually the capacity to yield acceptable and effective compromises was so diminished by sectional distrust and perceived sectional disparities in power or influence that the country, by 1860, faced disunion and the genuine threat of civil war. Southerners and Northerners perceived each other as having not simply different cultures, but different (and rather unflattering) moral characters. The nationwide two-party system that had brought about the compromises of the preceding decades had by the mid-1850s dissolved and was replaced with sectional parties, the Democrats in the South and the Republicans in the North. And the U.S. Supreme Court—with rulings such as Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), and Ableman v. Booth (1859)—seemed, at least to Northerners, to be aligned overwhelmingly with the interests of the slaveholding South. In short, several of the core components of the nation's political and legal system had been manifestly fractured along a geographic axis dividing North and South, rendering the system increasingly incapable of handling the affairs of the country as a unified whole.
The foregoing tale of sectional disunion subsequent to Alabama's admission as a state might seem too attenuated to attribute it in any significant way to Alabama's statehood by itself, and that is an entirely reasonable if not correct assessment. Nevertheless, might Alabama's admission to the Union still be considered a cause of the Civil War? In a limited sense, it certainly can be, for the chain of causal events quite clearly includes it. Of course, the causal chain as broadly conceived might also include the admission of Mississippi and Illinois in the preceding two years, and it should most definitely include a host of non-legal developments such as Eli Whitney's cotton gin, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and John Brown's raid on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry.
Alabama's statehood is only causal in a limited sense, though, because the events that were to transpire over the four decades following 1819 would likely have occurred in some form or another, whether sooner or later, and it is difficult to contend that a major sectional conflict of some kind could have been averted simply by altering one or even a few points in the nation's chronology. To put it another way, Alabama's admission to the Union is a logical and convenient point to enter the sequential narrative leading up to the American Civil War, but it is by no means a determinative element of that narrative.
What is less debatable, of course, is the central role of the law, its institutions, and its officers and participants in the significant events that define the nation's antebellum period. Whatever one might think about the admission of any particular state, it cannot be doubted the overall process of admitting states—as constitutionally ordained and legislatively implemented—was a pivotal and recurring component of the pre-Civil War chronology. Lawyers, judges, and legislators, in other words, were thus key players in the dynamic that did eventually culminate in the Civil War, just as they were key players in post-war reconstruction.
What any of us would have done in the decades leading up to 1860, were we the lawyers, judges, or legislators of that era, is difficult to fathom, particularly if we did not know, as they did not, that the nation would eventually resolve the slavery question only after four years of military conflict, the economic destruction of the South, the deaths of at least 620,000 soldiers, and the assassination of a U.S. President.
Further Reading
William J. Cooper, Jr., The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828-1856 (1978).
Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007).
Earl M. Maltz, Slavery and the Supreme Court, 1825-1861 (2009).
David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: American Before the Civil War, 1848-1861 (1976).
Elizabeth R. Varon, Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859 (2008).


text:
West New York resident Kristen Edmonds didn't need much encouragement to help when she heard about the plight of a 7-year-old Korean Jindo who needed a home.
Edmonds has dedicated a number of years to helping rescue this breed of dog, and is the founder and head of Treasured K9s, the only group on the East Coast dedicated to the breed.
The dog's owner is a decorated U.S. Marine veteran from Baltimore, who was diagnosed with terminal Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS; often referred to as Lou Gehrig's Disease), and can no longer care for the animal.
Edmonds founded Treasured K9s, Inc. in June 2008 to rescue and find new homes for Korean Jindo dogs. Hers is one of two organizations in the nation dedicated to the Jindo, she said.
She started in California
Edmonds, who served on the Board of Directors for the Jindo Project, Inc. for a time, began her rescue career working with Siberian Husky Rescues, in California. While in living in California in 2004, Edmonds fostered a "White Siberian Husky mix" that turned out to be a Jindo.
"When I got the call the person said it was a white Siberian Husky mix," Edwards recalled. "It didn't look exactly like a Husky. We thought it might be a rare Asian breed, possibly Japanese. We decided to take it anyway."
Kristen's mother-in-law is Korean came in and saw the dog and said it looked like a dog she knew back in Korea.
"We did some research on the breed and decided to dedicate ourselves to the Jindo," Edmonds said. "At the time there were two Jindo rescue organizations in the United States. Both were in California which has the largest Korean population in the U.S."
"He would be good with kids six or seven or older." — Kristen Edmonds
"Many people didn't take responsibility for the dogs once they were here," she said.
So she became involved in the Jindo Project, but this is no longer very active. She relocated to the New York City area in 2006 and continued her efforts, eventually founding Treasured K9s in 2008.
Jindos are growing in numbers throughout the U.S. and unfortunately, are also ending up in animal shelters with increasing frequency. Jindo rescue as a whole consists of only a handful of people throughout the U.S. and Canada. As a result, only a small fraction of Jindos are saved from dying unnecessarily in shelters. Foster homes are always the greatest need, but volunteers in all capacities are needed to increase the ability of Treasured K9s to save dogs.
Treasured K9s to the rescue
Edmonds said when she heard about a Jindo in Baltimore in need of a home she reached out to New York's Dog Whisperer Jeff Kolbjornsen, founder of a canine rehabilitation center in New York in an effort to help.
She hoped to find Elkea, a young, 7-year-old male purebred Korean Jindo a temporary home until a permanent home is secured.
The matter became more urgent when Edmonds learned that the dog's owner – due to declining health – was going to relocate to a remote section of North Carolina. Edmonds said she is dedicated to finding the right home for Elkea.
The dog weighs about 44 pounds, stands approximately thirty-two inches from the bottom of his paw to the top of his head, and can even respond to commands in Korean. Up to date on his shots and recently neutered, young Elkea (the breed has an extensive life span of 18-plus years), Edmonds said, is the perfect dog for an owner seeking to be introduced to the breed. He enjoys getting his beautiful medium reddish brown fur brushed and loves people. The dog loves going for walks, playing with toys, fetching a ball or even playing Frisbee.
Elkea is a very good dog, but needs to be in a home where he is the only pet, Edmonds said.
A bit standoffish at first until he gets to know you, Elkea is very active, playful, and mischievous, she said.
"He would be good with kids six or seven or older," she said.
Adopting the dog long distance isn't a problem, but she said she would want the prospective owners to come meet the dog in person.
"We want people to show a commitment, and willingness to travel to meet the dog is a good sign," she said.
Those interested can fill out the application on the group's website. Edmonds said the group screens applicants, looking to get a read on the people adopting for the best possible match.
"We play matchmaker," she said. "Then we call and set up a time for them to meet. We also do a home visit."
If you are interested in adopting Elkea, please visit www.treasuredk9s.org to submit an adoption application or email email@example.com.
Al Sullivan may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.